


High Tension

by cofax



Series: Monroe County [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, outside pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:11:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippet set before "Loyal Opposition".</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Tension

Dub-Ell died in oh-three, the tumors finally accomplishing what forty years of hard hunts (natural and otherwise) and harder winters couldn't do. LaShondra wasn't sure how old Canthy was when she died, and she made sure never to find out.

It was 2003 when they put her in the ground, but it was two years before the legal stuff was settled and Shon could stop walking on eggshells. Half the folks in Monroe County thought she'd been Canthy's lover, and the other half thought she'd faked the will. Made it hard to walk into Barton's Feed and Tack for two hundred pounds of kibble and four boxes of the rawhide chews Boris loved so much.

Not that it'd ever been easy: Shon was pretty sure she was the only black woman in the entire county for the first ten years she was here. Things had changed, since: New Englanders have long memories, but see someone once or twice a week for twenty years and you begin to forget they weren't born here, no matter what you think of them. Besides, as Frank Barton would say, at least Shon spoke American, unlike the small community of Laotians working the one remaining paper mill in the county. She didn't mind it much, not anymore: she had other worries.

Like the way the strange spot out beneath the high-tension lines had come back to life in the last two years, spitting out hoodoos and whatnot and, last month, even a gumberoo. It got so bad Shon was thinking of selling the Browning place and seeing if the Kornfelders would sell her that six-acre parcel on the north side, so she could keep a better eye on it. Nobody'd died lately, but there had been a couple of near misses.

A month ago, Shon had finally given up and called a psychic from down in Lincoln to come up and take a look. She wasn't sure what she'd expected, maybe an old white woman with a tie-dye skirt; what she got was a short balding Greek with bad taste in cologne. "This is it?" he had snapped, when she stopped the truck in the pull-off.

"Short walk that way," she said, and pulled the shotgun from behind her seat.

He huffed, and hadn't gone twelve steps before he lit up a cigar. It smelled rank, here in the September woods, all crisp scarlet and yellow leaves, the day still warm in the patches of sun between the trees. He didn't complain as she led the way along the narrow trail and into the open space under the power lines, but his face was flushed when she finally stopped.

"This is it," she said. There wasn't really a center to it, so far as she could tell: the few creatures--monsters--she'd backtracked had all appeared in slightly different places, some as far as a half a mile apart. But all under the power lines.

The Greek--Poulos, he'd said his name was--nodded, puffed on his cigar a few times, then blew out a smoke ring. Then a second and a third, which hung unmoving and fixed in the air before him. After the third, he muttered a phrase in something that wasn't English or Spanish or Latin, and they flared suddenly with light, flashing brightly even in the autumn sun. "Shit!" Poulos muttered, taking a wary step backwards.

"What is it?" Shon shifted the shotgun and looked over her shoulder. There was nothing around that she could see.

Poulos frowned, puffed on the cigar, and blew one more smoke ring. This one behaved as they should, drifting softly southward with the wind and dispersing into invisibility. His broad face sweaty, hand shaky, Poulos shook his head. "Get me out of here."

He didn't say anything all the way back to the truck, but he jumped at every snapped twig and whisper of wind through the trees. When they were finally inside, he rolled down the window and kept smoking the cigar, but this wasn't for effect: it was for comfort. Shon didn't start the engine, though, and when he looked at her, demanding, maybe scared, she just raised an eyebrow. She was paying him for his time, wasn't she?

"I dunno what that is," he said. "It's old and deep. Like a hole, a well, maybe."

"Ain't no water in there," said Shon. "Just bad shit."

"It smells like rotting meat." Poulos puffed desperately, filling the cab of the truck with the foul smoke. Shon rolled a window down and started the engine. "And sulfur."

Shon snapped her head around "Sulfur?"

"Yeah," he said. "Why?"


End file.
